I have 17-year-old boy/girl twins who have been a delight to raise along with their three older brothers. During my pregnancy with them I was confined to complete bed rest and on a daily regimen of terbutaline. It was at about four months that I was diagnosed with twins and due to the fact that it was my fourth pregnancy, I was told that I would have preterm labor. I started taking the drug orally and was also put on home monitoring. Twice a day, in the morning and evening, I was attached to a monitor and it was sent via telephone line to my nurse-midwives. I must have made six or seven trips to hospital during this time because of pre-term labor. Toward the end of the pregnancy, when I was completely unable to even stand up for a few minutes, I was admitted to hospital and put on a mag-sulfate IV drip for 48 hours. After that I was sent home with a terbutaline subcutaneous pump. I delivered my twins via c-section at 36 weeks. My daughter was actually 35-and-a-half weeks and because of this, she was whisked off to the neonatal ICU due to difficulty in breathing. I never even saw her until 12 hours later. I was able to bond with my son immediately, though. He looked exactly like his three older brothers. :-) For the next three or four days they were both required to have their blood sugar levels tested. I was told this was due to the fact that I had been on the terbutaline for so long. I was also told that there was nothing to be alarmed about. With the exception of having to watch them cry when their little tiny feet were poked every hour, I was enjoying my stay in hospital with them. (My three older sons were all born at home, delivered by a midwife, and I had never experienced a hospital birth.) Finally, all three of us went home and things were wonderful. They both grew normally. We were a very normal, but large, family.
During these years, my three older sons did exceptionally well in school. Two of them were even in the gifted programs and it never occurred to my husband and me that our twins would be any different once they started school. But things changed once they started kindergarten. They just couldn't seem to learn. I was back to work by this time, and felt that because I wasn't there 24 hours a day to help them like I had been with their brothers, I felt it was my fault and had somehow let down my children. In second grade, they couldn't read and were very behind. Their teacher told me they had the attention span of four-year-olds and this worried me. I had to take action. I withdrew them from public school and proceeded to home school them, along with the assistance of my now high-school-aged older sons. Within three months, they were reading and seemed to be doing better. So I re-enrolled them in public school. Their teacher even told me that they were now a year ahead of their peers in reading and comprehension. I felt very satisfied. But as the years went by, I could see that they were struggling. Unfortunately, the school psychologist told me that neither of them had a "learning disability," and so were not eligible for any assistance. My guilt returned.
In spite of all this, each year they were advanced to their next grade level. Once they started high school, everything just fell apart. Each year, they had not acquired the necessary credits and just got further and further behind. We had since moved to a different school district and I continued in my attempt to make the school psychologist admit there was a problem. Finally, last year, when they were both juniors, albeit not having the junior amount of credits, a new psychologist told me they did indeed have a learning disability. But by now it was basically too late. The damage had already been done. This year, my daughter is attending school. She is merely a senior in name but will be required to take a credit recovery course or remain for another two years. My son, on the other hand, has decided to study for his GED test. He is not going to school at this time.
My husband and I have wracked our brains trying to figure out why our "babies" were not as successful in school as their brothers were. The doctors and psychologists all told us they were fine. There was never any type of diagnosis of ADHD (which we do NOT believe even exists) or autism. Then we started talking about my pregnancy. And the first word I thought of was TERBUTALINE. So now I have started my mission to find out if this is the cause of their learning trouble. Everything I have read has indicated that it IS the cause.
Could my now nearly grown babies have a form of Autism? I won't even bother with the doctors. They don't seem to know anything, and I had a serious falling out with their pediatrician of long-standing. The twins will be 18 next March. They will be adults in a world of struggle and dog-eat-dog and have not properly developed their important developmental skills. I feel that I have failed miserably, and have severe anxiety because of my worry over them.
Please let me know if this helped anyone. If you are pregnant and having to take any pre-term labor medication such as Terbutaline, please take the necessary steps to provide for your child/children and their future schooling. I am convinced that this drug has had an adverse effect on my twins ability to learn. Physically, they did splendidly. But there must be a connection between this medication and learning abilities. Whether it is autism or something else that the medical experts have not yet discovered, PLEASE do not let your children slip through the system like I did.
I hope my story has helped.
